Voces del Prado

Goya reached 250, and no one noticed

Juan Luna Fernández, Head of the Department of Conservation of 18th Century Painting, 1969-2016

In 1995 a bank asked me to organise an exhibition on Goya in Spanish collections, nothing from the Prado’s collection. I got a lot of loans from private collections, taking advantage of the good relations I had with various friends. The bank had signed a restoration agreement with Toledo cathedral and we asked the Cardinal Archbishop for the loan of The Taking of Christ [El prendimiento] and of course he couldn’t say no. But there were also very rarely seen paintings as they came from private collections, normally hung on the walls of private houses or in some Church property. When we held the press conference I said: “So, this exhibition is a foretaste of the exhibitions that will be taking place next year to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Goya’s birth.” In fact, no one had noticed that date and at that point the Ministry said, “What’s all this? We haven’t got anything organised! We’ll have to do something like we did with Velázquez. We absolutely must. Who’s the person to do this?”